Attending to the Little Deaths

Posted on May 15, 2020 by Timothy Brown

IrishWake_iStock_48838408 I was running today, listening to a podcast where they were discussing one of my favorite Buddhist authors, Pema Chodron, and her book When Things Fall Apart. It is not an exaggeration to say that Chodron’s book has changed my life, and saved many parts of me over and over again.

As the discussion unfolded using the book as a map, the host and guest noted that Chodron’s notion of the Buddhist maras, or “evils,” includes the “fear of death.” And the guest went on to say, “And that doesn’t just mean the big death. That’s also all the other little deaths.”

And I stopped running.

I stopped running, put my hands on my knees and sighed a big sigh. I just decided to be for a brief moment, huffing and puffing, sweat cascading down my face. I took a second to honor a little death right then and there: the death of my routine.

Yes, you might think it’s a small thing, but I hadn’t honored it yet. I have deluded myself, using the drugs of “one day” and “soon” to shove my grief aside, but I have to come to grips with the fact that my routine, the one I knew, is dead. I have been afraid to honor it because, well, that would mean I’d have to admit it is really dead.

It is.

And for me this is no small thing. I live and die by the calendar and the clock. For as flexible as my schedule is, I make it inflexible purposefully because I need fences to organize my life. It’s ironic, really: I don’t like fences when it comes to my thoughts, beliefs, or ideas, but I need them when it comes to my daily rituals.

We must have roots somewhere if we want to grow, right?

And it got me to thinking that all around us, in our homes, in our workplaces (or lack thereof), in our civic engagements (or lack thereof), in our patterns and practices, there are a thousand little deaths at this moment, and so many of us are just “waiting it out.”

But, Beloved, this is a Wake, not a pause. This is a Wake.

The Wake, especially in my Irish heritage, was where you sat up all night with the body of the deceased, usually laid out on your kitchen table, and you drank, and played cards, and made a ruckus, trying to rouse the dead person from their prone position just in case they might still be alive. Everyone likes a party, right? And so if they were “mostly dead” and not “fully dead,” they’d rise to join.

They’d wake.

Well, in March we thought maybe our routines were just “mostly dead.” But now, in May…well, my friends…it’s time to start organizing the funeral.

We need to honor these little deaths. We need to stop pretending that things can go back to the way they were. I mean, even if we wanted them to, and I’m not sure we really do because, let’s be very honest: the system wasn’t working very well for many, right?

But even if we wanted them to, they can’t. We’ve seen too much.

We’ve seen how quickly the elderly have become expendable. We’ve seen how fragile our “robust economy” actually was. We’ve seen how grocery store clerks belong in the same sentence as fire fighters, nurses, and doctors, and we’ve noticed how glaringly other so-called “important professions” are missing from the term “essential worker.” We’ve seen how our political system and our politicians, with some notable exceptions, will politicize a pandemic.

We’re not waiting out this virus, Beloved. It’s killing things. People, yes, but also our illusions, and we have the choice to numb ourselves with platitudes, or we can do the hard thing and no longer shelter our lives from the pain it is causing.

We must honor the little deaths, even if we do so in little ways.

It is freeing for me to say, with such frequency, “I don’t know.” I say it all the time with my kids now. My partner and I say it to one another regularly, especially when we talk about things happening in the summer months and next fall.

I don’t know when we’ll get to go to grandma and grandpa’s house again. I don’t know if we’ll be at our nephew’s graduation party. I don’t know when we’ll resume swimming lessons. I don’t know if we’ll keep our jobs.

I just don’t know.

One of the little deaths I’m having to grieve now in this Wake is the death of so much certainty I thought I had, so many plans we had already made. Like my ancestors at an Irish wake, I raise a glass to that certainty saying, “Cheers. You had a nice run, old pal.”

Because it’s gone, and in many ways that’s both OK and so not OK, but either way it’s just damn true.

We must attend to the little deaths, Beloved. We must free ourselves to grieve, to tell stories of what was, and be present in the waiting for what will be.

Justice is on Trial

Posted on May 8, 2020 by Timothy Brown

merlin_171694110_ab8d0f6a-5a84-4062-9ead-342a03b23d83-superJumbo

The cross Arbery’s mother set up. Photo credit: Richard Fausset/The New York Times

“What have you done?!” the Lord asked. “Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground!” (Genesis 4:10)

That question, “What have you done?” cuts both ways in America. It always has, if we’re honest.

If you think for one damn minute we live in a post-racial society in the (dis)United States, explain to me why we still see Confederate flags at Reopen Michigan rallies.

Explain to me how a man in a KKK hood in California shops for produce in compliance to the face mask ordinance.

Explain to me how this pandemic has, in its very spread, cut itself along racial lines…doesn’t that make you scratch your head? Doesn’t that make your heart hurt? Doesn’t that objectively indicate that there is disparity in our system, forcing the spread of disease in communities of color?

Explain to me how a man can go jogging in a neighborhood of moss-hung trees and modest ranch houses and, just because of the color of his skin, is stopped and accosted by white residents armed with weapons.

No, not just accosted…hunted. They saw him running and, like seeing an animal they wanted to get, grabbed their guns, hopped in their pick-up, and gave chase.

And if you think this is an isolated incident, need I say the name Trayvon Martin?

Need I say the name Alton Sterling?

Sandra Bland?

We may have outlawed lynching, but it took two months to get an arrest in Ahmaud Arbery’s murder, with the prosecutor originally advising that no charges be brought because the murderers acted “in self defense.”

Apparently being black in a predominantly white neighborhood is threatening.

Actually, the above statement is exactly correct in my personal experience.

Not too long ago someone visiting my house looked out our window and, seeing a person of color in the cul-de-sac casually said, “Someone’s in the wrong neighborhood…”

The person is our neighbor. I mean, literally they are our neighbor, but this person who shows up weekly in a house of worship should also understand that word in a different way. Did not Jesus say “love your neighbor” and, when pressed on the issue, gave a wide-sweeping definition of that word that undoubtedly included those who don’t look like you?

Let’s face it: most Christians have deified their prejudices, their political policies, and their bankrupt morality, not God.

The question, “What have you done?” weighs on me though. Because when that person made that casual remark in my home I just said, as casually, “Oh, that’s Mr. X. They live in that house,” pointing down the road.

What I should have said was, “Yes. Apparently you are in the wrong neighborhood if you think we talk like that. Apparently you are in the wrong neighborhood if you think this family puts up with that. This isn’t the house, or the neighborhood, for that.”

Combating racism starts at the level of the heart, the head, and the mouth. So many white people gather at Arbery’s grave not to cheer a miscarriage of justice, nor to protest it, but rather just to go home shaking their heads, preferring guilt to responsibility.

Be responsible. We are responsible, in all the ways that word can be used, for this mess.

Justice is on trial, Beloved.

And for Christians, this issue needs to be personal. Not only because our past is complicit in the problem, but even more so because we claim (emphasis on that word) to worship a God who fell victim to a miscarriage of justice.

The story of Jesus is one of a loving God going walking in the wrong neighborhood, a neighborhood that preferred violence to peace, preferred division over unity, preferred vengeance over service.

So, the question I’m asking myself, and I’m asking you: what have you done?!

Channeling the Best Parts of the Greatest Generation

Posted on March 13, 2020 by Timothy Brown

Covid-19 is set to put most everything on hold in the United States, as it is already doing in China, Italy, South Korea, and Norway.

Early on in this cycle, as news started trickling out about the virus and its spread, I was a scoffer. “We’re overreacting,” I said to my partner. “This is just crazy.”

And then the deaths started in the United States. And confirmed cases started rising not by tens, but by hundreds, in a week.

“I’m youngish and healthy,” I thought. “I’ll be fine.”

Which is a natural thought…but was only looking out for me. I’m not at risk, but I still have a role to play here. And so do you.

The tide is coming, and we have a choice as a nation: implement severe caution now in the short-term, or clean up from a deadly disaster in the long-term. The stakes are pretty clear at this point.

The problem is that the last generation to really tighten their belts and do the hard work of social sacrifice was the Greatest Generation, and most of them have passed on. Through rubber shortages and food rationing, to the social distancing that was necessitated during the Spanish flu and polio years (they were children then, but certainly felt the sting), that generation understood what it meant to sacrifice for the greater good, and that’s just never really been asked of the United States since, thank God.

Even the draft in Vietnam, while certainly difficult and earth-shaking for many, did not bring the United States to its knees in the way we’re slowly being brought to a stop now.

We’ve been here before in World Wars and epidemics of the past, but for most of us, we’ve never been here before.

And we need to embrace the moment to show that we can do it, and that we understand the risks involved.

In this time we are being called to sacrifice for our neighbors; we’re all being drafted into this, and we must answer the call, hopefully for only a short while.

But if it’s longer, so be it. We can do this, together.

At its best, Christianity is a religion that mandates (not just encourages, but mandates) that adherents look out first and foremost for “the least of these.” In this moment, those people are not only the ones who are at most risk of catching and dying from this virus, but also children who will go without food because schools are canceled, families who will scramble to find childcare as that is canceled, workers who rely on mass gathering for their wages, and small businesses with small margins who will see a huge reduction in traffic.

So, what to do? Here are just some ideas…

-Consider take-out from your favorite place, or buy a gift-certificate to use after the crisis.

-Check on elderly neighbors and offer to go shopping for them for staples (note: toilet paper is a staple, but no one needs a million rolls to get us through this…Covid-19 does not cause diarrhea).

-Give a lump-sum donation to your local food bank, now, to get them over the hump.

-If you go to a church, give your regular offering even if worship is suspended. Mail in the check, or give online.

-If you are in charge of large gatherings, put them on hold for a few weeks.

-Support local artists who live gig to gig with a Patreon donation or a gift in honor of their creative work.

-If you have predictable income, maybe give a gift to someone who is losing wages because they don’t have paid sick-leave or have been furloughed without pay (which may happen).

-Stay home as much as possible. Seriously. And if you do go out, stay away from others as much as possible.

-Offer gift-cards or even meals (as long as no one in your family is sick) to families with nurses, EMTs, police officers, or fire personnel.

-Wash your hands. A lot. Not just for you, but for others.

-Offer your home to people for whom home isn’t a safe place. As long as we’re symptom free, small gatherings are not bad.

-Talk on the phone. A lot. Especially to people who may feel extra lonely during these days of social isolation.

We can do this. Let’s channel the best parts of the Greatest Generation and all do our share (not just fair share, but even extreme share) to make this a footnote in the annals of history.

Death by Inbox

Posted on May 29, 2019 by Timothy Brown

Email is killing my profession.

I bet it is killing yours, too.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the connectivity. I love the easy access, the quick note, the ability to stay in touch with people most anywhere in the world at anytime, day or night.

Technology is not the root of all evil, friend. And though I will never be mistaken for an “early adopter” of anything (except for the exciting socks craze which, arguably, I think I started), I’ve not lived without email since my age turned double digits.

But I am still convinced it is killing my profession, and I’m willing to bet it is killing yours, too.

Ever check your email early in the morning, like 5am, and see that fresh, new email sitting there from irate so-and-so?

Ever look at the time stamp on it and see that it was composed well past midnight, and so you know so-and-so was not at their best, and maybe not even in their right mind, but there it is?

Two things come to mind for me in the scenario: shame on me (and you) for checking email at that ungodly hour. And, two, the technology that allows for such a rant to be shot off does all of us no favors in that moment.

Or, think about that email you sent where you were a little more frank than you should have been because, well, you were pissed? Had you been face-to-face, the look on the other person’s face would have softened you a bit. I’m willing to bet on it.

But in the faceless world of the inbox, your unfiltered words are immortalized, living well past the trash folder it will eventually be relegated to, if it’s not held on and saved for evidence to be used against you in the court of public opinion.

Or remember that time you emailed that whole group to eviscerate one member? Shame on you. Or if you were part of the email chain, shame on who sent it (and you for not saying anything). A new way of publicly shaming people has been invented as we hide behind cables and screens.

And finally, let’s be honest: we’d rather write an email than pick up the phone, which is creating a culture of imaginary intimacy in caring professions. Death by inbox works both ways, of course. Final blows are struck by both the emails we receive and the ones we send.

Solutions are many, of course. Setting limits on how and when you check email is one way forward. Another is second guessing whether a phone call would work better for your needs. A third is relegating email sending time to the 9-5 day, ensuring your best self (or at least better self) is sending them.

Or: take email off of your phone.

And finally, I’ve just started to delete emails without a reply. In the caring professions you have to do that, I think, to practice self-care. It’s almost a way of saving the person from themselves: they weren’t at their best, so you’ll avert your eyes until they get it together.

But it still remains true that the amount of time spent composing, responding to, and mulling over the constant stream of the inbox is carrying all of our souls ever slowly down the river Styx and into the death of resentment and fatigue.

We should not be tired just sitting at a desk, right?

I’m pretty sure that my generation will have obituaries and death certificates that say, “Death by Inbox” all the same.

That is, of course, until we start taking seriously the emotional and spiritual toll it’s taking on humanity and begin to put in safeguards.

Because I am convinced it’s a spiritual matter.

When I Think About My Children on Ash Wednesday

Posted on March 6, 2019 by Timothy Brown

636239814887137802-Ash-Wed-5 I know I write and talk a lot about my children. They have totally changed everything about my life, and even much about me.

Like, just now, my younger son, who attends preschool at the church I currently serve, popped his head into my office and said, “I love you, Daddy!” It’s totally changed my work day.

He does this every day, mind you. It’s one of the things I wait for in the morning. “I love you, too,” I respond. He always waits around until I say it, letting his class go on down the hall. After he hears it he’ll run to catch up with them.

We wait for love.

One of the most moving and meaningful things as a pastor is Ash Wednesday. On Ash Wednesday we get to do some public art: the public act of remembrance that you place on the foreheads of everyone who comes, from the oldest to the youngest, that we are dust.

That time is fleeting.

That the world buries us one minute, one hurtful act, one sinful offering at a time (much of which we participate in), and there is very little that we can do to stop it, so we should wait around to feel love whenever we can get it.

A few years ago on Ash Wednesday I was walking through the neighborhood in Chicago when a well-known gadfly said incredulously to me in my formal collar, “Gonna peddle some superstition today, eh Father?”

I ignored him. But as I thought about it, I realized that if I was going to speak to him on one day, Ash Wednesday would be that day, because Ash Wednesday is the day where religion offers something that speaks to everyone, regardless of what they do, or do not, believe: you will die.

Dying is the leading cause of death.

The knowledge of our mortality is too much to bear sometimes, though. And as I mark my own babies with that cross, I always choke a bit. It is too much for them to bear, too.

And yet, with their bodies, they do. Because cells grow cancer. Because heart disease and car accidents and suicide don’t seem to care about your age. And my babies are made of cells, and ride in cars, and live, and it happens. To all of us.

But instead of being depressing, Ash Wednesday is like the day when we all communally hug the cactus of our mortality, hug the cactus that we do wrong and harm in this world, even when we do want to (but also, sometimes, we do want to) and remind ourselves that we are not gods.

We are not God.

And once we get that fact out of the way, somehow we start to truly live. Like the cancer patient in remission who realizes that life is better spent on love than arguing. Like the near-death experience that increases are thirst for life rather than makes us more fearful. Like the person living with depression who, because the meds are finally working, smiles and laughs and realizes that they are worth it, by God.

When I think about my boys, my babies, my children on Ash Wednesday, I am full of hope.

I hope that they will embrace life, and death, and all of it with a gusto, with a big bear hug, as confident as they wear that cross, that sign of hope for Christians, on their brow. I hope it reminds them to love really freely, and really intensely, and to wait for love, and stick around for it. I hope it reminds them that they don’t have to do it all, they don’t have to be perfect, that nothing is unforgivable, and that they can admit that sometimes life is too much to carry alone, and that they aren’t alone even when it feels like that.

And, sure, my eyes will tear up, and I’ll choke a bit, but not because I will think of their death, but because I will think of how they can, they will, with their lives, and their love, overcome all that tries to bury them in this life, by God.

Mary Oliver Broke My Heart

Posted on January 17, 2019 by Timothy Brown

171127_r30985 I don’t remember when I first read her work. I’m sure it was in my twenties.

Because in my twenties I knew too much. Everything, actually. And if you doubt that, just ask my 27 year old self. I would smile demurely and shy away from your question, but secretly answer in the affirmative.

And then enter Mary.

Mary, the poet.

Mary, the theologian…though unwittingly, perhaps.

Mary, with her short stacked sentences packed on top of one another like pancakes, dripping with meaning.

Heavy, sweet meaning.

Her observations on simple things, like ducks and pipefish, made me wish I knew how to engage with the world in a way that still retained the wonder and awe and love of my young self.

And she was doing it in this way until she was quite old!

She helped me to realize that I knew not only nothing about things like ducks or pipefish, but I knew nothing about a life observed and that I better get with the program, better surround myself with poetry, if I was ever going to know anything about anything.

Let alone, myself. My life.

Poetry helps us to observe life, and observe it intently. With feeling. With hope and a good bit of angst and…good grief.

It is something, when it works.

Poetry is the picture that prose wishes it could paint.

Poetry is the picture, mind you. It doesn’t paint it; it is it.

Poetry is prayer both for those who are sure “prayer is perfectly fine for other people” and for those for whom prayer is every breath. It unites the faithful and the faithless in fancy couplets where they’re forced to hold hands, at least for a moment.

It is subversive.

Submersive, if that is a word. It doesn’t matter…that’s what it is.

It is like water, winding its way through your soul as your eyes are jarred by

unexplained breaks

and

dangling groups of letters that

just make you hold on because you’re never sure when you’re going to

jump.

…

And when you do jump, when you build up the courage to actually engage poetry like an explorer spelunking into the cave of words, you crash into meaning.

And your heart breaks.

Like mine did when I first pondered what I’d do with my “one wild and precious life.”

And you’re never put back together in the same way again, thank God.

Her collection House of Light sits on my desk. I crack it for inspiration quite a bit.

But my favorite of her poems is this one below. And it’s the one that I’ll end with, I think, because, well, she’s finally made the journey.

And let me tell you: with her wild and precious life she broke my heart.

And I am grateful for it.

The Journey

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice–

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

“Mend my life!”

each voice cried.

But you didn’t stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do–

determined to save

the only life you could save.

We Need to Stop Stigmatizing Mental Illness Every Time There’s a Mass Shooting

Posted on February 15, 2018 by Timothy Brown

53dc9ad853199-full I haven’t quite figured out how to say what I want to say here. It’s just not coming out right. So I’ll start by saying these three things that I think are absolutely true:

First, there is no excuse for the Parkland shooter. What he did was evil and horrible.

Second, we cannot have a conversation about mass shootings that only looks at mental illness and not at gun availability, gun sales, or our culture that idolizes violence.

And finally, when we talk about mental illness or mental health in these tragic situations, we need to start being more specific.

Because not all mental illness is the same. And we further stigmatize it when that’s (now) all that we talk about after a mass shooting.

In fact, there are over 200 different classified forms of mental illness.

And every time we have mass shooting in this nation, pundits and politicians and talking heads start pontificating about “mental illness,” as this generic, scary thing lurking in the dark corners of the classroom, of the internet, of the backstreets of America far from where normal, happy, and healthy people live.

And the problem with all of this is that many children (and adults), who would never pick up a gun and never hurt anyone, live with mental illness. And more and more are being diagnosed with mental illness at an earlier age…using that term (because that’s what it is)…and so they hear all this mess and it heaps loads of shame upon them.

Depression is mental illness.

Bi-polar disorder is mental illness.

ADD and ADHD are forms of mental disorders.

Anxiety disorders are forms of mental illness.

Schizophrenia is mental illness.

PTSD is mental illness.

Dementia, even, is mental illness.

The Greek word for “desert” is eremos, which literally means “abandonment.” And for many people, living with a mental illness already feels a bit like a desert experience, like you’re alone and abandoned and no one understands quite what you’re going through.

And to trumpet this as the cause behind these mass shootings, well, it’s just not the full case, and doing so just intensifies that desert experience for many. It further stigmatizes an already stigmatized illness.

And if we can’t talk about banning gun sales because not all gun owners and not all guns are the same, then we can’t talk about all mental illness as being the same.

(And don’t even get me started on the phrase “nut job” being in the same sentence as mental illness…which I heard from one politician.)

And today I heard calls for people to report “trouble children,” and news reports continually use the word “loner” when talking about him, and I’m not sure what to do with that. If more energy was put into befriending and including and lifting up these so-called trouble or loner children, we’d probably be better off.

Sure, we should report any activity, online or otherwise, that fantasizes about mass murders (which this individual did…and authorities knew about). And of course if a kid is talking about shooting up a place, we need to tell someone (which he did…and the authorities knew about it).

But, if you ask me, instead of looking for so-called loners, look for kids (and adults) with unhealthy idealizations of war, first-player shooting game obsessions (especially if they can talk to others online without parental supervision), unquestioned racism and bigotry, and unaddressed tragedy in the home or in the heart…these are probably more accurate indications of brooding unrest than just being a “loner.”

If you ask me, we should start talking about how we, as a society, have become violence voyeurs.

All of this is more troubling than having “weird kids” being singled out. So let’s not go reporting every kid who is quiet in class, wears black instead of blazing colors, likes to write and read and play role-playing games just yet…

All of my church’s research on youth ministry hammers home that the more adults that are active and involved in a child’s life, the more that child will feel cared for and accepted. It’s not just peers, and even probably not primarily about peers (though peer-love is necessary), but active adults.

Active adults who can change the narrative of “you’re strange” and “you’re trouble” into the real truths that point out the good qualities of a youth, that reinforce their strength and creativity and courage.

And you want to talk about courage? Talk to a kid who gets picked on every day at school but yet gets up the next morning and goes anyway.

Look, your parents may have mental illness. Your pastors may have it. Your children may have it. Your spouse may have it. You may have it. Mental illness is not some thing that people bring into “normal” society.

Mental illness is part of normal society.

There is no excuse for what this individual did. And it is clear he was ill in some way. But we all have to look in the mirror, too.

Our society has to look in the mirror.

And until we can all come to grips with the ways that our society hurts where it should help, alienates when it should alleviate loneliness, and ostracizes our children at the fringes, we’ll just keep stigmatizing mental illness, avoid talking about gun laws, and wait around as one so-called “nut job” after another amazingly reenacts the same scene over and over again.

What Valentine’s Day Can Learn from Ash Wednesday

Posted on February 12, 2018 by Timothy Brown

vintage_blindfolded_cupid_valentines_tarot_card-r69e9e0fbe135412f893d556e955012e3_vgbaq_8byvr_324 February 14th is Ash Wednesday this year.

We should all go out to eat on Valentines Day with ashes on our foreheads.

I mean, whether you’re a Christian or not, you should go ahead and do it. Because Ash Wednesday is a day that speaks a deep truth about humanity that we all try to avoid: we’re mortal and flawed.

So no matter what kind of foundation you gussy yourself up with before that first date, and no matter what kind of aftershave you apply to make that skin smell just so-so fine, you can’t change the fact that we all share the same mortal boat.

And I don’t say this so that you will despair. I say it just out of honest truth.

Because here’s the thing: if you give your heart to something, you will lie to yourself. You will say, “This. I give it to this because it is worth my heart.” But the subtext that we too often have in such an action is some sort of delusion that the things worth our hearts are perfect or incorruptible or have earned it by some sort of morally superior truthfulness or…

Look, give your heart away to worthy things, but often times what makes them worthy is that you give your heart to them in the first place.

When I speak to couples about love and companionship and sometimes even marriage, I have to work hard to cut through the syrup and sentiment to arrive at something real at the bottom of it all: love is often, in the end, a choice.

Sure, it starts out as butterflies and pie in the sky, but once that wears away you will see what Ash Wednesday shows us: the flaw, the scar, the thing that was covered under foundation and aftershave, years of perfecting a story that omits a chapter, and hours of therapy.

But it is there, that flaw is there, and that is OK.

Do you hear me? That is OK.

Because you cannot give your heart to something perfect; there is no such animal…at least not one immediately available. You certainly are not perfect.

What Ash Wednesday can remind us, though, is that no flaw is fatal. It’s why Christians mark the forehead in not just any shape, but the shape of the cross, a paradoxical sign that is the embodiment of saying, “Dead things can live again…even those dead parts of you.”

And sometimes, Beloved, all it takes is a little love to make the dead places in us rise from the grave. Scars fade. Flaws smooth.

Just because something is dead in this life does not mean it will always be dead.

And nothing is ever perfect, mind you. Even Jesus’ own resurrection came with scars from the hurt and the pain of the fight two nights before.

But that body walked again, by God.

This year we have this fun juxtaposition: Cupid and Christ. Cupid blindly shoots and we romantically think we fall in love.

Christ, though…well, Christ’s love isn’t blind. God’s love isn’t blind to all our hurt and pain and wrongs and ego and all that mess. Christ’s love is visionary, illuminating all those shadowy parts of ourselves, exposing them for what they are: flawed but not fatal.

And that person you fall in love with? Perhaps we should stop imagining Cupid shooting blindly and start embracing a Divine love that sees all and still finds a way to keep the arms open, the welcome present, the love intact.

Not that you have to fall in love with someone to be whole. And even more so, sometimes the love we thought would last does not…cannot. Sometimes our flaws do push us apart in the end. Which is when we need to lean even more into the story of Ash Wednesday and a Christ whose love is visionary and completing (rather than competing).

Because it is not a flaw to not be partnered. Sometimes it is a calling.

And it is not a flaw to be divorced. Sometimes it is a necessity.

But when it all feels like a flaw, keep in mind that the deep truth of everything is that it has an expiration date. Feelings, life statuses, and even life itself. Things will not always seem and be the way are today.

So embrace the truth of the situation: we are dust. Glorious star dust, the stuff of the cosmos, wonderful and beautiful and sparkling, and yet, dust all the same.

So risk the date, fall in love, eyes wide open. Or be single and loving it, giving your heart to many other worthwhile things.

But remember that things aren’t worthwhile because they are perfect; often they are worthwhile because you love them.

And how do I know?

Because you and I are not perfect, and yet we are loved by God. And others.

And we’re worth it.

My Pastoral Note on Las Vegas

Posted on October 2, 2017 by Timothy Brown

Beloved,

images Another act of domestic terrorism has filled the news, filled our heads, and at this writing, hundreds of people who were enjoying life just hours ago are now filling the hospitals and, tragically, over 50 are already confirmed dead.

Our addiction to violence is a disease, and it is a sin.

I refused to tune into the news channels this morning, fearing that the children that live in my house might see the world they’re inheriting. They’re too young not to know how to be brave in the face of such madness. Sometimes I wonder if I’m too young.

St. Peter, in one of the moments when he spoke out of love and not fear, responded to Jesus in a time of perplexity, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of abundant life.” (John 6:68)

We don’t go to guns. We don’t go to violence. We don’t go to partisan bickering which all just becomes a distraction. The war of words rages while people die. Trite moralisms and vapid optimism will not do any of us any good today. And, when we go to Jesus, he doesn’t offer that. He offers true solace, he offers us the chance to confess, to forgive, to breathe, to mourn, and to re-center ourselves in peace rather than fear.

But, we must remember that, if we go to Jesus, if we seek refuge under those wings, Jesus will send us back out, too. It is not enough to pray for the victims of mass shootings, we must pray with our shoes on, prepared to work for justice and an end to this kind of violence, as Jesus calls us to in our baptism.

Walter Brueggemann, a prophet in our own time, has a book of prayers (Prayers for a Privileged People [Abingdon Press: Nashville, 2008]) that I find myself thumbing through when these mass shootings happen.

And, let me be honest: I have looked at it too much in my almost 10 years of ministry.

His prayer/poem “God’s Gift in the Midst of Violence” is one I offer to you here today. But pray it with your shoes on.

Peace today.

P.S. One immediate thing that you can do is donate blood at your local Red Cross. Click that link to find where your nearest donation center is. Blood donations will be needed!

God’s Gift in the Midst of Violence

The world trembles out of control.

The violence builds,

Some by terrorism,

Some by state greed,

Dressed up as policy,

Violence on every side.

You, in the midst of the out-of-control violence.

We confess you as steadfast, loyal, reliable,

But we wonder if you yourself are engaged

In brutality

We confess you to be governor and ruler,

But we wonder if you manage.

We in the midst of out-of-control violence,

We in great faith

We in deep vocational call

We in our several anxieties.

We—alongside you—in the trembling.

This day we pray for freedom to move

Beyond fear to caring,

Beyond self to neighbor,

Beyond protection to growth.

That we may be a sign of steadfastness,

That anxiety may not win the day.

You are the one who said, “Do not be anxious.”

And now we submit to you.

“You’re Not Promised Tomorrow” is a Lie

Posted on June 16, 2016 by Timothy Brown

It seems like after every national tragedy–and let’s be honest, tragedy on any scale–people have this “ah-ha” realization about the fragility of life.

I think that’s a pretty natural reaction. A wake-up of sorts.

And that “ah-ha,” that realization, often gets filtered into a phrase that comes out something like this: “we’re not promised tomorrow.” It’s a carpe diem phrase of sorts. A call to mindfulness. A call to smell the roses. A call to, as Qoheleth and Dave Matthews chirp, “Eat, drink, and be merry” for tomorrow we die.

Or, at least, we might die.

On the one hand, I get that sentiment. In a cosmic sense it is absolutely true, and shouldn’t be ignored.

But the tragedy in Orlando was not some cosmically caused killing. A meteor didn’t fall from the sky and destroy Pulse. It wasn’t some freak shark attack.

If it had been a meteor or a freak accident, then I could get behind the phrase “we’re not promised tomorrow” as a response to this terrorist attack.

But this was a terrorist with a gun living under the laws and regulations of the United States of America. We can’t just shrug our shoulders, hold our babies closer, and hope it doesn’t happen to us. That’s ridiculous. On some level, uttering that phrase in response to this particular act is just plain stupid sentimentalism; a vapid romanticism.

At its core, the laws and regulations that we live under are a social contract of sorts, a promise if you will, that your tomorrow cannot be purposefully infringed upon by my actions in a way that inhibits your “life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness.”

I’m saying that those people at Pulse were promised a tomorrow. At least in the sense that no one could infringe upon their tomorrow in a forceful way by law. We had a social contract that someone decided to break, and here we are shrugging our shoulders and saying, “No guarantees.” Sure…no guarantees. But we do have promises which, while not guarantees, are the social contract version that is pretty darn close.

And when we say something like, “We’re not promised a tomorrow” as a response to a situation that is a breach of social contract we abstract the incident to arms length, when what we actually need to do is draw the incident as close as possible.

Because things at arms length…we have little control over that. It’s a psychological crutch. But this type of mass shooting is actually something that we, through our social contracts, can take action on.

When Moses went up to Sinai and descended with those two tablets (three, if you believe Mel Brooks’ account), it was to establish a social contract both between humanity and between Divinity and humanity. It is basically a response to, “how shall we then live?” And it was, in essence, a promise of tomorrow for those people. This is how we order ourselves, by promising one another a tomorrow because God has intended tomorrows for humanity.

And for the Christian, the promise of tomorrow goes even past death. So Christians must take quite seriously this part of our social contract.

And we cannot, of course, ever guarantee something like this shooting won’t happen. Our laws are no preventative guarantee; they are a promissory note, though. A promissory note that we all sign onto.

And, look, the promise was broken. Let’s not pretend it was an act of God. Let’s not pretend this was written in the stars or some similar platitude that will help us swallow this pill.

Do not swallow this tragedy. Choke on it. Choke on it and let action to save lives be our response. If you throw it out at arms length we’ll just do this all again.

Let’s not pretend we have no way of figuring this out. We know how this happened; we know how it happens.

Let our “ah-ha” moment not be a realization about the fragility of life, but a renewed commitment to tomorrow and to keeping promises and to doing the things that help us all to keep our promises.

Because, actually, we are promised tomorrow. Not guaranteed…but at least promised.

And if you say otherwise, you are delusional or lying or just unwilling to face the reality that we are not powerless here, we’re just choosing to be powerless here…

Reluctant Xtian

When Arguments Cease Making Sense

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